Velleius Paterculus

The Roman
History

In 1515, the manuscript of Velleius Paterculus' Roman History was
discovered
in the abbey of Murbach in the Alsace by a humanist scholar who called
himself Beatus Rhenanus but whose real name was Bilde von Rheinau
(1485-1547).
Five years later, he published the text. Although the original
manuscript
is now lost, we know that it was badly written and contained many
errors.

Yet, the discovery was immediately recognized as
important. In
those days, Paterculus' now deservedly famous description of the
conflict
between the Romans and the Germanic tribes, which culminates in his
account
of the battle
in the Teutoburg Forest, seemed remarkably relevant to the
conflict
between the German reformer Marten Luther and the Roman Catholic
church.
Today, the Roman History is appreciated as a readable summary of Roman history, and as an
important
source for the reign of the emperor Tiberius.
In fact, Paterculus' treatise is the only surviving historical study
from
the early empire.

Rhenanus called the text Roman History,
and although many
scholars have used this title ever since, it is in fact a bit
misleading.
Paterculus does certainly focus on Rome, but he situates its history in
a larger context. Maybe Compendium of World History
would have been
a better title, although it was obvious to his contemporaries that the
conquests of Rome had changed universal history into Roman history.
This
was an accepted point of view, developed already by the Greek historian
Polybius
of Megalopolis (c.200-c.118) in his World
History.

Paterculus is also indebted to the Roman historian
Sallust (86-34),
who stated that the fall of Carthage
in 146 had been the most important turning point in the history of
Rome.
Until then, the Romans had been virtuous people, but since they no
longer
had a serious enemy, their greed was no longer checked and they were
corrupted
by luxury, which in turn made civil war inevitable. Paterculus agrees:

When Rome was freed of the fear of Carthage, and her rival in empire
was out of her way, the path of virtue was abandoned for that of
corruption, not gradually, but in headlong course. The older discipline
was discarded to give place to the new. The state passed from vigilance
to slumber, from the pursuit of arms to the pursuit of pleasure, from
activity to idleness.

As if to stress this point, the Roman History is
divided into
two halves. In the first book, Paterculus describes the events until
the
capture of Carthage. In this part, which unfortunately contains two
long
lacunae, there is much room for Greek, oriental and Carthaginian
history.
The words quoted above are the introduction to the second book, which
describes
the Roman civil wars and the reigns of Augustus
and Tiberius.

Beginning of the career of Tiberius; Conquest of
Raetia; Defeat of Lollius;
Beginning of the Germanic Wars; Gaius
Caesar in the east; His death; Tiberius
appointed as Augustus'
successor; his Germanic wars; Tiberius suppresses the Pannonian and
Dalmatian
revolts; Varus'
defeat in the Teutoburg Forest; Tiberius' punitive actions; He becomes
emperor

Blessings of
Tiberius' reign; several successes; prayer to Jupiter, Mars, and Vesta
for the prosperity of the Empire and the health of its ruler.

In his first book, Paterculus devotes much space to the
achievements
of non-Roman people (especially the Greeks). He probably was the first Roman to write
a universal history. This is interesting, because the Roman
History
was dedicated to Marcus Vinicius, consul
in 30 CE, who is often addressed in the second person. One is tempted
to
think that Paterculus tried to remind the chief magistrate of Rome that
the Roman empire had become a truly Mediterranean empire, and that this
created certain responsibilities. If so, the author's thoughts were
seriously
out of season: during the reign of the conservative Tiberius, the Empire
was still there to serve Italy.

Bust
of Octavian/Augustus as high priest. Museo Nacional de Arte Romano, Mérida.

Perhaps this interpretation is far-fetched, but there may be more
implied
criticism in the Roman History. Although Paterculus
includes the
usual remarks about the blessings of the reign of the
emperor
Augustus, his account of the Augustan age is essentially the story of a
series of military disasters: the defeat of Lollius in 16 BCE, a
Thracian
insurrection, the rebellion of the Pannonians and Dalmatians in 5 CE,
and
the battle in the Teutoburg Forest in 9. The introduction to the reign
of Augustus is ambiguous - to say the very least:

The civil wars were
ended after twenty years,
foreign wars
suppressed, peace restored, the frenzy of arms everywhere lulled to
rest;
validity was restored to the laws, authority to the courts, and dignity
to the Senate;
the power of the magistrates was reduced to its former limits, with the
sole exception that two were added to the eight existing praetors. The
old traditional form of the republic was restored.

This is the equivalent of praising general Pinochet for bringing peace
to Chile. Marcus Vinicius and any other senator reading the Roman
History knew
that Augustus was responsible for the last fourteen years of civil
war, that the power of the magistrates had not been restored to former
limits
but simply curtailed, and that the foreign wars simply continued. In
fact, Paterculus is an important source for the conflicts in Pannonia
and Germania.

The details of his description of the Augustan age are
no less telling.
For example, we learn about Augustus' failure as a father (his daughter
Julia's children "were to be blessings neither to herself nor to the
state",
2.93.2), and Paterculus singles out for praise consul Gaius Sentius
Saturninus,
who used the absence of Augustus to punish corruption. The implication
is that Augustus was unable to cope with these excesses.

Tiberius (British Museum)

It is not hard to see why Paterculus was skeptical about the blessings
brought to humankind by Augustus. During his own active career as a
soldier,
he had seen the wars of the pax augusta. Although
he was not directly
involved in the battle in the Teutoburg Forest, Paterculus took part in
the retaliatory campaigns, and he also had first-hand experience with
the
difficult Pannonian and Dalmatian wars. He must have understood that
the
Roman conquest of the earth was not a pretty thing when one looked into
it too much, and knew how empty the boasts of Augustus were and how
shallow
his propaganda was.

There is another reason for Paterculus' skepticism. The
long and interesting
descriptions of the Pannonian and Dalmatian Wars and the Germanic
campaigns
were excellent means to introduce the martial qualities of Tiberius,
Paterculus'
patron, who "by virtue of his services had long been a Caesar before he
was such in name" (2.104.3).

This remark is one of the many examples of Paterculus'
enthusiastic
loyalty to his former comrade-in-arms. Unfortunately, he often crosses
the line where an acceptable (and praiseworthy) loyalty degenerates
into
flattery. In those cases, he is no longer a historian, but becomes a
panegyrist.

It must be noted, though, that it is unfair to take the final part of the Roman History, after 2.126.1,
as evidence for Paterculus' historical judgment. It is meant as
panegyric and clearly presented as such, commencing with a rhetorical
question ("Who would undertake to tell in detail the accomplishments of
the past sixteen years?") and a triple metonymy ("strife banished from
the forum, canvassing from the Field of Mars, discord from the curia").

Varus

Yet,
Tiberius can not have been
pleased with one detail of the Roman History.
One example is
Paterculus' description of the
battle in the Teutoburg Forest. In the
years
immediately after the disaster, general Quintilius
Varus had been blamed for the Roman defeat. During the reign of
Tiberius,
however, Varus' noble family had attempted to restore the memory of its
relative.
The soldiers of the Seventeenth,
Eighteenth,
and Nineteenth
legions were responsible, they said. Tiberius, who had by marriage been
connected to Varus, had also been his personal friend, and favored the Roman
nobility
anyhow, was inclined to support this revision. Paterculus, however, who
had known many soldiers who had perished in the disaster,
reminded
his readers of the heroic behavior of the legionaries, and concluded
that

from all this, it is
evident that Varus, who
was a man of character and of good intentions, lost his life and
his magnificent army more through lack of judgment in the commander
than
of valor in his soldiers.

The story of the defeat in the Teutoburg Forest also illustrates the
other qualities of Paterculus' Roman History. The
description of
Varus contains some criticism ("That he was no despiser of money is
demonstrated
by his governorship
of Syria: he entered the rich province a poor man, but left it a rich
man
and the province poor") but is essentially friendly ("a man of
character
and of good intentions").

After the almost comical description of Varus' behavior
in Germania
("sitting on his tribunal he wasted the time of a summer campaign in
holding
court and observing the proper details of legal procedure"), there is a
turn to the real tragedy, which Paterculus introduces suddenly ("after
this first warning, there was no time left for a second"). The story
also
contains a sad philosophical comment:

It is usually the case that heaven perverts the
judgment of
the man whose fortune it means to reverse, and brings it to pass -and
this
is the wretched part of it- that that which happens by chance seems to
be deserved, and accident passes over into culpability.

Paterculus reflects upon the human condition, offers a balanced and not
uncritical portrait of a man he has known, and changes in a few lines
from
what amounts to comedy to sad tragedy. The result of this unexpected
change
is that the reader feels compassion with those brave men whose lives
suffered
a similar change in fortune. Whatever one may think of Paterculus'
frequent
hyperboles and his sometimes clumsy sentences, he knows how to tell a
good,
varied story. He was a narrator, not a writer.

For a very long time, Paterculus has been regarded as a
mere flatterer
and a poor historian. This is not untrue, but it is possible to stress
this point too much. He did his best. His rejection of the Varronian chronology
proves that he understood that Caesar and Augustus had tried to
manipulate the past - which is more than we can say of modern
historians who follow Varro's propaganda.

Finally, it is unfair to say that Paterculus was a bad
historian. It
is true, he did not consult archives, and it is also true that his
analysis
runs less deep than that of an author like Tacitus.
But these are not the
standards to be applied. The ancients thought that a historian had to
have
first-hand experience with politics and warfare, ought to have
interviewed
the main actors of his story, and should have visited the countries he
was describing. From this point of view, the only one that mattered in
Antiquity, Velleius Paterculus was the perfect historian.